While Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald is under fire for comments minimizing the impact of wait times for veterans seeking care at veterans’ health care facilities, over the past eight years the VA has spent upwards of $2 million to building “smoking shelters” at various VA locations around the country.
Federal records at USASpending.gov indicate that since 2008, several dozen contracts totaling $2.7 million have been awarded involving smoking shelters at VA facilities, though others have put the figure much higher. Some of these contracts involve additional work, such as bus shelters, but many simply involve the design, construction, and/or assembly of the shelters for smokers at VA facilities.
Some of the contracts call for up to seven shelters at a single VA location. One particular contract pairs the erection of the smoking shelters with a second very practical job. The instructions read: “Deliver and install detached smoking shelters and relocate oxygen storage shelter.”
The history of VA smoking shelters is long and controversial. A study was published in the American Journal of Public Heath in April 2013 entitled “They’re Going to Die Anyway”: Smoking Shelters at Veterans’ Facilities. The authors of the study contend that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, even as society in general and the government in particular were moving to restrict smoking more and more, “the tobacco industry, acting through a front group, persuaded Congress to require smoking areas in all VA hospitals.” Congress passed legislation in 1992 requiring smoking shelters at all VA hospitals, but a more contentious provision requiring the sale of tobacco at all VA hospitals was dropped.
The authors of the study also conducted surveys and filed FOIA requests, and extrapolating their findings put the total possible cost of smoking shelters at nearly $27 million:
Rates of smoking are significantly higher among veterans than the general population. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, only 32 percent of veterans who have received healthcare from VA say they have never smoked.
